Clarendon Canerock

Canerock is the spiced side of Jamaica, built by the French house Maison Ferrand around pot still rum from the Clarendon distillery in the island's south. Clarendon runs both pot and column stills, and it is the heavier pot character that gives this more backbone than the average vanilla spiced bottle, even as the spicing and sweetening steer it firmly toward dessert rather than a dry sipper.

The profile is rounded and pudding like: vanilla, caramel and coconut up front, a little ripe fruit underneath, and warm baking spice woven through. Ferrand is open about its use of dosage, the Cognac term for a measured sugar addition, and that sugar is doing real work here, softening the spirit into something thick and velvety. It reads as a flavoured rum, honestly so, and sits happily neat, over ice, or stirred into sweeter cocktails at 40%.